Important values

What are important values in a relationship?

Truth, trust, honesty, loyalty, commitment, respectful, caring, dedicated, devoted, affectionate, providing happiness, open to hearing your other half voice and feelings, ensuring they are safe and secure, loving.

Reply 2

Dunnig Kruger

"Truth, trust, honesty, loyalty, commitment, respectful, caring, dedicated, devoted, affectionate, providing happiness, open to hearing your other half voice and feelings, ensuring they are safe and secure, loving. "

I don't expect truth all the time from my girlfriend. I expect to her to lie when it suits her. I know she's lied to me in the past. Including over 1 or 2 big things. That's OK the lies made sense from her point of view. I try to be a pragmatist and a realist. I don't expect perfection from anyone.
I don't mind lies too much. They are just a sign that someone's human. And a lovable enough human when the lies make sense from their point of view.

Trust. There's always a chance that she's done 1 or more things that I wouldn't be happy about if I found out. And vice versa. She can never be 100% sure what I've been up to when I'm not with her. This little bit of doubt is fine. It's an antidote to taking each other for granted.

Loyalty, commitment, respect. These are all best when they've been earned. The tend to come automatically when they've been earned. Therefore it's down to me to act in ways that motivate her to want to stay with me. And vice versa.

Providing happiness. The key to happiness is having a good self esteem and the expectation that good things will happen in the future. These are independent of whether I'm in a relationship or not.

Ensuring they are safe and secure. I am quite capable of looking after my own safety and security. And expect the same in my partner. We're adults. Not helpless children. There's a minimum of white knighting from me. And I expect no white knighting from her.

What are vitally important are:
Are we sexually compatible?
Are we compatible in how we resolve conflict?
Are we compatible in our approach to money? Earning it, spending it, investing it.
How many children do we want?
What is our basic approach to raising children?
Geographically compatible? Are we both happy and able to live in the same place?

What about love? In my experience that has always taken care of itself. Anyone that makes love with me, will become addictively in love with me. Whether that love lasts, or is worth continuing will then depend on our compatability in the 6 key areas. It won't depend on fluff like her always being honest with me, or me providing her with safety and security.

The Disney and social conditioning portrayal of relationships is largely a load of nonsense. The keys to a good enough relationship are relatively simple. And they are not what many people think they are. Surface logic does not apply. What really matters and counts in a relationship can be counter-intuitive.

Reply 3

londonmyst

For me, in a medium to long term dating or coparenting relationship the most important things are:
Compatible ambitions, shared lifestyle preferences, always keeps promises, reasonably good two way communication, strong sense of personal responsibility & work ethic, intelligence, common sense, affection, mutual attraction and some shared interests or hobbies.

I value self-control, a calm personality, positive mindset, secular orientated approach to everyday life, dog friendly attitude, ambition and choosing to fully assimiliate into mainstream english & british culture.